This book appears to be well acclaimed critically, so I’m sorry to say that I was a little bored with it. I didn’t dislike it, but nothing really held me in. It’s only something like 160 pages, but it took me weeks to read it because I was just uninterested. I didn’t care what happened next. I could put it down, which basically means I didn’t have much concern with continuing.
Admittedly, my disinterest could be where the book came from, I received it years ago from someone I no longer have a relationship with, so perhaps it’s just lingering bad feelings from that. The person who gave it to me said she reminded him of me…and after reading it I don’t see the comparison. Anyway, I wouldn’t say this was a waste of my time, but I don’t have any interest in reading it again.
I have a feeling that some of Gaiman’s other books are better and I might like them more, so I will perhaps get some of them in the future. I’m definitely going to be putting this one up on paperbackswap.com basically right away.
One thing I didn’t like is that it felt too long, it could have been cut down a bit, and maybe I would have been more involved in the story. Or perhaps that’s the point, Coraline is so bored for awhile that it’s important we feel that boredom ourselves. In any case, that didn’t work for me. I also didn’t like that her parents seemed to have no recollection of the situation – one would think they would remember being in some hell world for several days, but that’s just my opinion.
This is probably a good book for children, it just wasn’t for me.
